Obama to Select Justice - Justice Résumé »
EXERPTS
The current court is the first to be made up entirely of former federal appeals court judges. And only a few of those appeals courts at that: seven of the justices served on what might be called the court of appeals for the Acela circuit, in Boston, Philadelphia and Washington.
In voting against the nomination of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. as a senator, Mr. Obama said that “adherence to precedent and rules of construction and interpretation will only get you through the 25th mile of the marathon.”
Chrysler’s Fall - The Lenders to Blame »
EXERPT
The other creditors, who sought to distinguish themselves from those who have received bailout money, believed they had a stronger hand. Many of them bought Chrysler debt for about 30 cents on the dollar, long after it became clear that the company was in trouble. Most of this debt is secured by Chrysler assets — factories, equipment, real estate and the like. The thinking was that in the worst case, these assets could be sold at a profit if Chrysler were liquidated.
My Tortured Decision »
FOR seven years I have remained silent about the false claims magnifying the effectiveness of the so-called enhanced interrogation techniques like waterboarding. I have spoken only in closed government hearings, as these matters were classified.
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Fortunately for me, after I objected to the enhanced techniques, the message came through from Pat D’Amuro, an F.B.I. assistant director, that “we don’t do that,” and I was pulled out of the interrogations by the F.B.I. director, Robert Mueller (this was documented in the report released last year by the Justice Department’s inspector general).
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We must ensure that the mistakes behind the use of these techniques are never repeated. We’re making a good start: President Obama has limited interrogation techniques to the guidelines set in the Army Field Manual, and Leon Panetta, the C.I.A. director, says he has banned the use of contractors and secret overseas prisons for terrorism suspects (the so-called black sites). Just as important, we need to ensure that no new mistakes are made in the process of moving forward — a real danger right now.
Rumsfeld's war »
“Top Rumsfeld aides were already laying the groundwork for torture barely two months after the 9/11 attacks, and just weeks into the war in Afghanistan. The Pentagon’s general counsel’s office contacted the military agency that runs the Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape programs — schools where U.S. personnel and contractors are taught how to resist abuses that prisoners of war have been through before — in December 2001 to find out how the SERE training could help interrogators break al-Qaida suspects. Military officials at the time told top Pentagon aides that the SERE techniques produced “less reliable” information.”
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On April 16, 2003, Rumsfeld authorized 24 techniques at Guantánamo including sleep deprivation, messing with detainees’ diets and pretending the interrogators were from a different country — one where torture was even more acceptable — in order to scare them into cooperating. And he told commanders to ask him for permission to use additional techniques.
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By 2004, when news of the abuses at Abu Ghraib got out, the military had already grown accustomed to a culture of abusive interrogation that made that scandal possible — even if the Bush administration tried to claim it was a blip in an otherwise clean record. And as the Senate report makes clear yet again, that culture came about thanks to Rumsfeld.
Bush's - Law »
- NYT: Any Indictment of Interrogation Policy Makers Would Face Several Hurdl
Efforts to prosecute the high-level Bush administration officials who created and authorized the interrogation program in 2002 - like Vice President Dick Cheney; the C.I.A. director, George J. Tenet; the defense secretary, Donald H. Rumsfeld; and Alberto R. Gonzales, who was then White House counsel - also “would be extremely difficult,” said Eric Posner, a University of Chicago law professor.
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The shield against prosecution provided by the Bush legal team’s assurances has led some critics to focus on the role played by the lawyers themselves, like Mr. Cheney’s counsel, David S. Addington; Mr. Rumsfeld’s counsel, William J. Haynes II; and the authors of the Justice Department memorandums: John C. Yoo, Jay S. Bybee and Steven G. Bradbury.
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“No one is above the law,” Mr. Holder said. “So we’ll see what happens.”
The St. Petersburg Times has won Pulitzer Prize for national reporting
The board cited PolitiFact’s use of “probing reporters and the power of the World Wide Web to examine more than 750 political claims, separating rhetoric from truth to enlighten voters.”
Neil Brown, executive editor of the St. Petersburg Times, which launched PolitiFact in August 2007, said the award was “proof that the Web is not a death sentence for newspapers. In fact, PolitiFact marries the power of old-fashioned shoe-leather journalism with an extraordinarily powerful way to present it.”
•> also see: FactCheck
a nonpartisan, nonprofit “consumer advocate” for voters that aims to reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics. We monitor the factual accuracy of what is said by major U.S. political players in the form of TV ads, debates, speeches, interviews and news releases. Our goal is to apply the best practices of both journalism and scholarship, and to increase public knowledge and understanding.
The Annenberg Political Fact Check is a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania
{from http://www.astronomy.com/asy/default.aspx?c=a&id=8152}
This image from NASA’s Kepler mission shows the telescope’s full field of view - an expansive star-rich patch of sky in the constellations Cygnus and Lyra stretching across 100 square degrees.
A cluster of stars, called NGC 6791, and a star with a known planet, called TrES-2, are outlined. NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech
Expansion of the National Service Programs
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/09/03/27/A-Special-Moment-for-Service/
“The bill contains key elements of the President’s national service agenda: Creating an army of 250,000 Americans a year involved in full and part time service to address some of our nation’s greatest challenges, including healthcare, education, energy and economic opportunity; expanding service-learning to engage young-people and put them onto a pathway to service; providing better service opportunities for seniors and boomers; and establishing a Social Innovation Fund to identify and grow programs that fix tough community problems.”
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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/27/us/politics/27cong.html
“In addition to adding positions to AmeriCorps, the bill would create four new service corps. The expansion would cost about $6 billion over five years. The bill would raise the education stipend paid to volunteers to $5,350, the same amount as a Pell Grant college scholarship.”
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sen-edward-m-kennedy-/the-next-generation-of-na_b_173629.html
The Serve America Act draws on some of the lessons of the past two decades of service programs:
- Service can make a greater difference in tackling problems if we focus on specific challenges;
- Service opportunities early in life can put young people on a path to a lifetime of service;
- More and more older Americans are interested in putting their skills and experience to work for their communities; and
- Forward-thinking social entrepreneurs are coming up with their own effective ways of tackling some of our greatest challenges.
see: a summary of the legislation.
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http://www.nationalservice.gov/about/recovery/index.asp
American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 » $201 million in funding for the Corporation for National and Community Service to support an expansion of AmeriCorps State and National and AmeriCorps VISTA programs.
“The Corporation received funding in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (Recovery Act) to put approximately 13,000 additional AmeriCorps State and National and AmeriCorps VISTA members to work through national service, meeting needs of vulnerable populations and communities during the current economic recession. Funding from the Recovery Act may also be used to provide current grantees with relief from requirements to provide matching funds. The Corporation also received funding to improve its information technology systems.”
Afghanistan and Pakistan
Obama Announces New Strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan - Washington Wire - WSJ
“At a time of economic crisis, it is tempting to believe that we can short-change this civilian effort. But make no mistake: our efforts will fail in Afghanistan and Pakistan if we don’t invest in their future”
